Category: Uncategorized
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How the pictures of the food I cook are small acts of rebellion
I’m making dinner. This is something I do almost every day, and have done almost everyday for more days than I can count. At some point in my early 20s as I started reading cookbooks and watching the Food Network, I started taking pictures of the food I made. I plated it. I tried to…
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Still hungry
I started cooking when I decided, sometime in my late teens, to be a vegetarian. My parents weren’t on board. Like many European descendants, my family centered its meals around meat. At 19, I was a student at the University of Victoria, and started taking environment studies class and learned that eating and cooking was…
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Special delivery
When I was in elementary school I had a pen pal. I remember having a pen pal but I don’t remember writing to that pen pal. I remember receiving letters and post cards, and had every intention of writing back but there were bikes to write, Barbies to play with and Full House to watch.…
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Leaving a mark
I got my first tattoo when I was in my early 20s. I began dreaming of having tattoos when I was 18 or 19. The ideas I had for tattoos then were awful. While my husband and I were walking around the neighbourhood a few weeks ago, I told him about some of the plans…
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Cookies for uncertain times
Tears started gathering along my eyelids this morning as I wiped cookie dough off wooden spoons and spatulas in the kitchen sink. A batch of double chocolate cookies are chilling in the fridge. I’m tired. I didn’t sleep well. My mind a mix of anxiety, fear and deep sadness, that, if I’m honest, has been…
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Ramblings from a reluctant morning person
I miss sleeping in. I write these words as I adjust to a new schedule, well, it’s actually kind of an old schedule, but I’ll get to that. I woke up at 5:50 am this morning. I haven’t really slept past 7:30 am in three years, but 5:50, in case you haven’t been up that…
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Dear Celine
Dear Celine, You’ve been on my mind and in my ears a lot lately. I mean, if I’m being honest, you’ve been on my mind and in my heart since I was 12 years old. My parents got one of those Columbia House Records subscriptions when I was in middle school. It was that time…
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What’s for dinner?
The first thing I thought about this morning was “what am I going to make for dinner?” Ok, maybe it wasn’t the first, but it was definitely one of the first things I thought about when I peeled my eyelids open. For many, many years, even decades, I have spent many minutes (which likely, if…
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Trading in my summer feet
I curl my toes and let out a low, almost inaudible “owwwwe.” My feet arc pulling themselves away to the rocks. For a minute between steps I think, there’s probably a spa in Beverly Hills that offers a treatment like this for $50,000. There’s probably some therapeutic element to walking over round beach rocks to…
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Cause for Celebration
Sunday is my birthday. That’s what I told the woman working at the butcher shop yesterday when she asked what I was doing for the long weekend. And of course, she followed-up by asked, “what are you doing for your birthday?” And in response I offered a blank stare. For many years I had BIG…